Winter 2001

Features

Cataclysm, Light, & Passion :: Even though the Washington wine industry is in its relative infancy, it is playing with the big boys. How did it get so good so quickly? by Tim Steury

The Laguna's Secrets :: On the shore of the Laguna Especial, some 30 locals of all ages watch patiently, no doubt mentally rehearsing the crazy gringo stories they'll share tonight over dinner. The archaeologists are the best show on the mountain. by Tim Steury

Related Stories:

Arts for all

“WOULDN’T you like to
write music for someone
famous like NSYNC?” a
Clarkston High School student
asked Greg Yasinitsky.

Tough crowd.

But Yasinitsky, a Washington
State University music
professor and jazz studies
coordinator and a nationally
recognized composer,
arranger, and saxophonist,
can handle it.

“We’re in the only field
where we have to compete
with dead people for jobs.
In jazz, everyone can buy
a John Coltrane CD. Why
buy yours?” he says.

Yasinitsky reflected on the
first of his three years as
composer-in-residence at
Clarkston High (CHS), sponsored by the
Commission Project of New York. He received the project’s inaugural
Washington state residency in October 2000, the first West Coast composer
to be so honored.

“The commission’s purpose is to show that we’re living, breathing
human beings that go through a process to create the music,” he says.

Yasinitsky works with some 300 music students in a high school whose
typical interaction with composers spans three days, not three years. The
low-key, late-rising Yasinitsky also melds styles with CHS’s dynamo of a
music director, Fred Dole, who, Yasinitsky admits, “tires me out” with
near-constant enthusiasm, a photographic memory for everyone’s unique
minutiae, and an inclination toward 7 a.m. band practices.

But the two men share a most important quality for any kind of creative
collaboration: the desire to instill love of the arts in the next generation.
This in mind, Dole asked Yasinitsky to write a piece to celebrate the completion
of the school’s Performing Arts Center. The piece had to be scored
for every CHS student involved in music “to show that, symbolically, the
center is for every kid in the school,” Yasinitsky says.

His piece, “A Statement of Principles,” drew its inspiration from an
advocacy document created by the Music Educators National Conference.
The CHS choir and concert band premiered the piece to a packed house
during the March 1 center dedication. WSU School of Music and Theatre
Arts students also presented it the same month during the Performing Arts
Gala commemorating President V. Lane Rawlins’s inauguration.

“The [advocacy document] was written by committee,” Yasinitsky says,
“but its spirit was about the importance of the arts to a community.”

The text reads: “A statement of principles! All who share our concern
about the quality of education in general, and of arts education in particular,
should understand the value of arts education for every child. We invite
all Americans to join us in support of the following principles. Every
student in the nation should have an education in the arts! The arts should
be recognized as serious, academic subjects. On behalf of the students we
teach, the schools we work in and communities we serve, we ask all Americans
to join us in protecting and advancing opportunities for all to receive
an education in the arts! A statement of principles for all! The arts for all!”

“As musicians, we’re constantly having to make that case,” Yasinitsky
says.